and the distance was ninety furlongs, seven and a half went to every mile.

5. At each booth they said to it, there is food, and there is water: and they attended it from each booth to the other, except the last, because he did not go with it to Zuck, but stood at a distance, and observed what it was about to do.

6. What did he then do? he divided the scarlet tongue: half of it he fastened to the rock, and half of it he fastened between its horns, and pushed it backwards: it rolled over and fell down the precipice, nor did it reach the middle of the mountain before it was torn limb from limb. He went and sat under the last booth till it grew dark; and when was he polluted in his clothes? from the time he went out of the walls of Jerusalem. R. Simeon says, From the time of his driving it to Zuck.

7. He went to the bullock, and to the goat which were to be burned, cut them open, and took out their entrails. He placed them in a dish, and offered them upon the altar; he made incisions in the carcases, and caused them to be brought to the place of burning. And when were they polluted in their clothes? From the time, they went forth of the walls of the court. R. Simeon says, From the time that the fire broke forth upon the greatest part of the carcases.

8. They said to the high priest, the goat has arrived at the wilderness: and how did they know that the goat had arrived at the wilderness? they made sign posts, from whence they waved napkins, and knew that the goat had arrived at the wilderness. R. Juda says, was not this also a great sign to them? From Jerusalem to the beginning of the wilderness was three miles; they went a mile, and returned and reckoned that as a mile, and knew that the goat had arrived at the wilderness.

AN EXTRANEOUS TRADITION.

R. Ishmael says, was not this also another sign to them. The scarlet tongue was tied to the gate of the temple, and when the goat had arrived at the wilder ness, the tongue became white, as it is written, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow*.

*Isaiah i. 18.-For the changes that took place in some parts of this service, after the death of Simon the just, see Prideaux's translation of the Gemara on this passage in the Jerusalem Talmud. Connect. p. 2. Vol. 3, p. 3.

MR.

MR. EVANSON in Reply to JONATHAN DRAPIER;

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S MAGAZINE.

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SIR,

IN your fifty-first Number for January last, I see you have admitted a most scurrilous, unjust and unprovoked personal attack upon my moral character, from a correspondent who meanly disguises himself under the ficti tious signature of Jonathan Drapier. I depend therefore upon your impartial justice to admit also into the next number of your respetcable publication the following reply to it from me.

Who or what J. D. really is, I neither know nor care. He tells us indeed that he is a relation of a certain town-clerk of Tewkesbury, who has been many years dead. But whether he intends that information to serve as a proof that the phrenzied zeal of furious, intolerant bigotry, like other kinds of insanity, runs in the blood of particular families, I will not pretend to say. From the whole style of his letter to you, and his curious mode of arguing, I perceive that the writer, whoever he be, has a much greater degree of zeal than of knowledge; and that he mistakes for well grounded, justifiable religious zeal, that blind impetuous, falsifying, abusive party spirit, which we often see so shamefully abused in the contests of the partizans of different candidates in popufar elections. But, though he calls himself a Christian, he is so far from displaying any marks of the real spirit of Christianity, that he shews plainly, he "knows not what manner of spirit, the true disciples of Christ are of." The only part of his letter however deserving any notice from me is the concluding paragraph; which, excepting one circumstance, and that so grossly misrepresented as to be nothing like the truth, is one tissue of malicious falsehood from beginning to end. I actuated solely through fear of the orthodox lawyer and townclerk!!!

O tremendous Justice Midas, &c.

There is only one being, Sir, in the universe, whom I ever thought worthy of the fear of myself or any man. And for that benevolent, universal parent, all my feelings have been long absorbed in gratitude, love,

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and a perfect confidence of the continuance of his paternal favour and approbation.

Until I obtained ecclesiastical preferment sufficient to afford me a decent competence, I had not the leisure necessary for a studious investigation of the rise and origin of the most important theological doctrines. But going to reside at Tewkesbury, in 1770, and being soon after presented to a much better benefice, the vicarage of Longdon in Worcestershire, (which J. D. is so ignorant of my affairs as to know nothing of, for if he did, he must have known that his relative, whom he thinks so formidable, could have no influence there.) I set myself to a diligent study of the Scriptures of both Testaments, and also of whatever remains of the writers of the two first centuries after the apostolic age, in order to qualify myself thoroughly for a faithful and useful discharge of my duties as a ministring servant of Jesus Christ. But I soon found, that the system of religion called orthodox, and established by Constantine in the fourth century, owed its origin solely to the paganism of the converts of the 2d and 3d centuries, and was so far from being taught by the Apostles as the religion of the Christian covenant, that it was the very apostacy from it, which they predicted would very early take place, and at length be signally and utterly destroyed at the glorious coming of the Christ to assume his promised kingdom of this world, for the coming of which he taught his disciples constantly to pray. Under this conviction, I should have immediately quitted the Church, as I did after wards; if the circumstances of the times and the apparent disposition of the people to attend to rational arguments upon the subject, had not induced the sanguine hopes of my inexperienced mind, strongly impressed with the force of that evidence which had convinced it, self into a persuasion that it was probable, the petition of a large body of the clergy for a reformation of the liturgy, then designed to have been presented to the le gislature, together with such irresistible arguments as I then fondly thought I could urge to the public, might produce a considerable reform both of the creeds and book of common prayer.

With this view, in the year 1772, I published an exa mination of the doctrines of the Trinity, &c. addressed to the king as head of the legislature and of the church, Which, knowing the civil and ecclesiastical laws against Vol. VIII. Churchm. Mag. April 1805. L1

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the impugners of that doctrine as well as J. D. seems to do, I should never have done, unless, instead of being anxious to keep my preferment at any rate, as he falsely asserts, I had been previously determined to separate entirely from the Church, if no such reform was made. This determination I avowed in a private letter sent upon a particular occasion to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in October of the same year; and I repeatedly informed the Town-clerk and his intemperate colleagues, that such was my fixed determination, and that if they would have patience but a little while they would probably be soon rid of me, by my own voluntary relinquishing every conexion with the established Church.

If J. D. will ask the question of any surviving person who frequented any Church where I ever officiated, I am confident he will be answered, that I never was guilty in the performance of any part of the service, of any indecorous behaviour, such as he charges me with in the sentence where he pays a compliment to the wonderful sagacity of his deceased relation, at the expence of the understandings of the poor parish clerk, and all the congregation. It will easily be conceived, that after what had occurred to me, there were some words in different parts of the service, which I could not reconcile myself to the use of. Those of course, I either altered or omitted, and some passages of the Nicene Creed being of that kind, I was exceedingly provoked and irritated one Sunday morning at receiving a most impertinent, insolent mandate in writing, signed by the town-clerk and some others of the corporation, ordering me, as if I had been their menial servant, to repeat distinctly every word of the Nicene Creed. And to shew the worthy relation of your correspondent how much I set his haughty arrogance at defiance, instead of discovering that fear of him, which J. D. attributes to me, knowing that the Rubrick only orders, that it shall be sung or said, without saying by whom; and that in cathedrals it is chaunted by the choir, the officiating minister only beginning the first words, I hastily resolved to bid the clerk, if he found I stopped in that creed, to proceed with it by himself." He did so, for the first and last time, though J. D. tells you it was a usual thing, and so surprized were the congregation, that instead of joining with him " in the simplicity of their hearts" he actually read it solo. But the vexa

tion of the junto was so great in their turn, that some of them very indecently quitted the Church before the service was ended. A circumstance which made me see too late the fault of yielding to the impulse of sudden irritation. I therefore explained to them, and the whole parish the cause of my conduct in that single instance, and to prevent all ground of offence on either side in future, I determined to assign the morning duty at Tewkesbury to my curate, and to officiate at my other living myself. Their impatience, however, now would not. suffer them to await any longer the issue of the above mentioned efforts. And in 1773, they commenced a formal prosecution of me in the Bishop's Court: and though by certain irregularities of their proceedings, it was actually rendered invalid in limine, with the most obstinate pertinacity, they persisted in contesting that point in the superior court, and even appealed from thence to a court of delegates, who in the year 1777, finally quashed their prosecution.

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Common prudence prevented my publishing what I intended, pending that expensive and tedious litigation. But as soon as it was ended, I endeavoured to draw the attention of the hierarchy of the established Church in particular, and of the people in general to the doctrines called orthodox, as being not doctrines of the Apostles, but of the apostate Church of the apocalypse, by a letter addressed to Bishop Hurd, a copy of which I sent to him, to the Primate and some other Bishops; and no notice being taken of it, and the intended petition of the clergy having been before abandoned, I resigned both my livings in a few months after, and for ever separated myself from a Church, of which if it could have been reformed according to the doctrines of pure and genuine Christianity, I should have been happy to have continued a faithful member; but with which in its apostate state, both my own conscience and the warning voice of revelation forbid me to hold communion.

This, Sir, is a true state of my case, which the illiberality and injustice of your friend J. D. has compelled me to trouble you with, and if he or any of your readers will take the trouble to peruse, pp. 126-130, of the first,. or pp. 127-133, of the second edition of that hitherto unanswered letter, he will find that I have there given a similar account of it to the public near thirty years ago. I now leave you and your readers to form your own judg

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